Banana bread is one of the most popular recipe searches here at Allrecipes. And no wonder. At its best, banana bread is moist, tender, flavorful, and comforting. And it’s actually very easy to make. You don’t have to knead it or wait for hours while yeast makes the batter rise. (There’s a reason why it’s called a quick bread!) You simply mix a few simple ingredients together, pour the batter into a pan, and bake. Still, there are essential tips and techniques that help your banana bread turn out rave-worthy every time.

Photo by Meredith

Top Tips for Perfect Banana Bread

Prep the Oven and Pan First

Heat your oven and prep your loaf pan before you start mixing ingredients. The leavening ingredients that cause banana bread batter to rise—baking soda and baking powder—are activated as soon as they become moist, so the sooner the batter goes in the pan and into the oven, the better. Speaking of ovens, invest in an oven thermometer to make sure your oven is calibrated correctly. An oven that’s too hot will bake the outside of the bread too quickly and leave the inside underdone.

Photo by Meredith

Mix Dry Ingredients Thoroughly

Stir the dry ingredients together with a wire whisk in a large bowl. You want the leavening to be evenly dispersed throughout the flour so the bread rises properly when it bakes. And why a large bowl? Read on and all will be revealed.

Ripe Bananas Are Best

Choose very soft bananas with brown or speckled skins. As bananas ripen, they get sweeter and softer, which makes your banana bread moister and more flavorful. Plus, they’ll be that much easier to mash with a fork or potato masher. What other baked good is actually better when the main ingredient has been sitting around for a while?

Photo by Meredith

Mix Wet Ingredients Separately

Wet ingredients include butter, sugar, mashed banana, eggs, dairy, and optional liquid flavorings such as vanilla extract. For most recipes, you’ll start by beating—or creaming—the butter and sugar together, then stirring in the mashed bananas. Eggs go in next, and then the rest of the wet ingredients.

Use Room-Temperature Butter

Room-temperature butter is easier to beat together with the sugar so that the mixture incorporates air and becomes light and fluffy.

Mix Wet Into Dry

Use a spoon to make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, then pour the wet ingredients into it. Now you’ll see why you use a large bowl to hold the dry ingredients. You need all that extra room for stirring everything together in the next step.

Photo by Meredith

Stir Together Gently

Use a spoon or spatula to gently fold the ingredients together, turning the bowl and scraping up the flour just until the dry ingredients are moistened. Don’t worry about lumps in the batter; they’ll bake out.

Add-Ins

Additional tidbits such as nuts, dried fruit, and chocolate chips should be added after the wet and dry ingredients are combined. Again, fold everything together very gently.

Photo by Meredith

Don’t Overmix

This is probably the most important piece of advice in this whole process. Overbeaten batter will develop air pockets as it bakes and the bread will toughen up.

Left: Overbeaten batter makes large air pockets. Right: Banana bread should look like this when sliced. | Photo by Meredith

Test Early

A few minutes before your oven timer goes off, insert a bamboo skewer—not a metal skewer—into the center of the bread, making sure it reaches right into the middle of the bread. When you pull it out, check the skewer to see if wet batter is clinging to it. If so, return the bread to the oven. Test again in a few minutes. You want the skewer to come out with no more than a crumb or two clinging to it. The early test will help ensure that you don’t overbake your bread.